Poster info

The information here isn't particularly specific to our poster (the tips and examples certainly aren't).

Tips

Examples

You can generally walk through any of the science buildings and see examples of academic posters on the walls. As a general comment, most of them have too much text.

Many of the above “tips” links have examples as well.

Technical

You can create a cut-and-paste poster if you wish, but a computer-generated poster printed on a large-format printer is generally more professional and polished looking.

Poster printers generally print on a continuous scroll of wide paper. The printable area is typically 36". So, your poster should be formatted for a “page” that's 36 inches high (or wide, if you want a vertically-oriented poster). The poster boards at SFU have internal dimensions of about 45" square, so your poster shouldn't be bigger than 45 inches in either dimension.

There are many pieces of software that you can use to make such a document. PowerPoint is quite common, based on the you-probably-already-have-it criteria. Design programs like Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator are also good choices. It's also possible to produce a poster in LaTeX. Bitmap programs (like Photoshop) are generally inappropriate: a vector-based image is needed to print at this size with reasonable clarity.

You will likely have to convert your poster to PDF for printing. You can use the open source PDF Creator to do this from any program under Windows.

Printing

There are several options for printing:

Most copy-shops (Staples, Kinko, etc.) can print posters. They can be quite expensive ($100+). If you are planning to go this way, your best bet is probably to find a shop that has a poster printer in-house and ask about their turnaround time. Also ask about student discounts.
In particular, the Campus Printing Centre (the copy-shop in the Cornerstone building) can produce posters. Their price is $6.95 per square foot (i.e. total cost is length×height (in feet) × $6.95). They prefer PDF files, or Powerpoint if PDF isn't possible. Their turnaround time is 1–2 business days.
Document Solutions (or Reprographics, or Duplicating, or whatever they're called today) can print posters.
The School of Resource and Environmental Management has a poster printer. The cost is $12 per running foot (i.e. $12 × the length of paper you use, in feet). It is managed by Laurence Lee (laurence_lee @ sfu . ca); you can contact him for details.

Please get the poster to him two days ahead to ensure it's ready on time. They can handle powerpoint files (be sure to tell Laurence which version of powerpoint you used to create it) or PDF. Laurence will typically print a test on letter-sized paper for you to check.
IRMACS has a poster printer as well. To use it, you need to get temporary access to their network. You can contact their Project Assistant, Susan Stephen, who works Mon–Thurs from 9:30 to 4:30 (go to the IRMACS front desk, on the 10000-level of the ASB). She will give you a quick lesson on using the plotter, and you can then print the poster yourself.

You should plan of 2–3 days to get this done, more if there are others using the printer as well. The cost is $5 per square foot (i.e. total cost is length×height (in feet) × $5).

Most (all?) of these options require a couple of days lead-time to get the poster printed. Make sure you allow for that. Before you complain about the cost, remember: I could have made each of you buy a useless $100 text book. :)